Crosswise (Cybertron)
- Crosswise is an Autobot from the Cybertron portion of the Unicron Trilogy.
Crosswise is a monster hunter, and shares the following attributes of all the better practitioners of his craft:
- Lots of weaponry for every occasion,
- A tough, no-nonsense attitude,
- A propensity to dress in kewl black, and
- A super-cool, generic Central European accent.
He sometimes calls himself Smokescreen, for some reason only a SUPER COOL MONSTER HUNTER could ever understand. Out of his way, peasants!
- Japanese name: Autovolt
Fiction
Animated continuity
Cybertron
- Voice actor: Michael Daingerfield (US), Kenichi Mochizuki (Japan)
Eons ago, reportedly Crosswise captured and imprisoned lots of Decepticon "monsters" in a crazy egg-cave-place on Earth. He did this because he's a MONSTER HUNTER!
He was subsequently entombed in ice himself, till some humans freed him.
Crosswise' first thought on being de-iced was frantic concern over his imprisoned "monsters", and so he rushed to the prison site to check on them. It turned out that the hundreds of Decepticons had stayed put quite nicely... until Starscream found the prison by following the oblivious Crosswise, and promptly liberated all the prisoners to serve as his personal army.
Nice goin', Crosswise.
Toys
Cybertron
- Crosswise (Deluxe Class, 2006)
- Japanese ID number: GC-17
- Cybertron Crosswise transforms into a Bugatti EB 15.4 Veyron sports car (a fast, costly millionaires' compensation device). Though the design is modified to avoid licensing and legal problems it is also quite realistic, compared to some of the other Earth vehicles in the Cybertron line. The spoiler is a spring-loaded missile launcher that can fire a transluscent blue flame-shaped projectile. Plugging a Cyber Planet Key in his tailgate makes a pair of missile racks pop up from the engine bay and flip over onto his roof.
- Crosswise features a fairly complex transformation sequence harkening back to Robots In Disguise Side Burn in how the robot wears most of the vehicle like a shell, though Crosswise's robot mode resembles the classic 'hood-chest' style of Autobot cars. Compared to most other Cybertron toys (and continuing his favourable comparison to the RID toys), most of his joints allow an excellent range of movement due to extensive use of ball joints and a relatively unencumbered body design. Inserting the Cyber Planet Key flips the missile racks onto his shoulders beside his head, evoking a similar appearance to Generation 1 characters such as Prowl. Two more guns are molded into his inner running boards, and can be deployed beside his hips. Crosswise's Cyber Planet Key has the Cyber Key Code "d9f2" tampographed on its back, which when entered into Hasbro's Cybertron website, reveals additional information about the character as well as the character image seen at the top of this article.
- The are some minor deco differences between the Takara Galaxy Force Autovolt release and Crosswise. The Autovolt version has entirely gold painted hands, silver detailing on his missile racks and more of his rear lights painted.
- Crosswise was later redecoed into Smokescreen.
Trivia
- In Crosswise' early appearances on the Cybertron cartoon, he was called Smokescreen, as this was an early name for the character that had apparently lasted long enough to appear on dubbing studio Voicebox's scripts. The name was soon replaced by his proper one, but the earlier name did provide inspiration for the later Smokescreen redeco of Crosswise' toy.
